Greatest Historians and Historical Minds

Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Danish–German statesman, banker, and historian who became Germany's leading historian

Benoît de Maillet

A well-travelled French diplomat and natural historian.

Bertrand Russell

A British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobe

Cleopatra

Was queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and its last active ruler.

David Strauss

A German liberal Protestant theologian and writer, who influenced Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical

David Hume

A Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayist, who is best known for his highly inf

Diodorus Siculus

A genius historian from ancient Greece known for his universal history work Bibliotheca Historica.

Diogenes Laërtius

A biographer of the Greek philosophers whose works have become the foremost surviving source on the history of Greek phi

Edward Gibbon

Probably the greatest English historian of all times. Famous for his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Rom

E. A. Wallis Budge

An English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan and was knighted fo

Francesco Guicciardini

An Italian historian and statesman best known for his book The History of Italy.

Voltaire

French writer, historian & philosopher who wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.

François Guizot

French historian, orator, and statesman.

George Grote

An English political radical and classical historian best known for the voluminous History of Greece.

Gilbert Burnet

A Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury who was one of the few close friends in whom King William

Henry Adams

American historian and member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents

Henry Thomas Buckle

An English historian, the author of an unfinished History of Civilization considered to be the Father of Scientific Hist

Herodotus

An ancient Greek writer and geographer who was the first Greek historian.

Hippolyte Taine

A French critic and historian who was one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism.

Jacques Auguste de Thou

A French historian, book collector and president of the Parlement de Paris.

James Anthony Froude

An English historian, novelist, biographer, and editor of Fraser's Magazine

Johann Joachim Winckelmann

German art historian and archaeologist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman, and Roman art.

John Ray

An English naturalist widely regarded as one of the earliest of the English parson-naturalists.

Joseph Justus Scaliger

A French Calvinist religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and anci

Karl Marx

A German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.

Ludwig Feuerbach

A German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book The Essence of Christianity.

Max Weber

A German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist, who is regarded among the most important theorists on

Noam Chomsky

An American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes call

Oswald Spengler

A German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art and their relation

Paolo Sarpi

A Venetian historian, prelate, scientist, canon lawyer, and statesman active on behalf of the Venetian Republic.

Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl Stanhope

An English antiquarian and Tory politician remembered for his contributions to cultural causes and for his historical wr

Polybius

A Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work The Histories, which covered the period of 264–146

Posidonius

A Greek politician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, historian, mathematician, and teacher.

Stephen Jay Gould

An American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science.

Strabo

A Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Repub

Theodore Roosevelt

An American statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer, who served as the 26th president of the Unite

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Carlyle

A Scottish historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher.

Thomas Hobbes

An English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy.

Thucydides

An Athenian historian and general known for his account of the ar between Sparta and Athens

Livy

A Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled Ab Urbe Condita

Walter Scott

A Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright, and historian

Washington Irving

"Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820)

William Robertson (historian)

Scottish historian, minister in the Church of Scotland and Principal of the University of Edinburgh

William H. Prescott

An American historian and Hispanist, who is widely recognized by historiographers to have been the first American scient

Xenophon

An Athenian-born military leader, philosopher, and historian.

Francis Drake

A genius sailor, pirate and politician who made the first journey around the world and destroyed the Spanish naval force

Josephus

A first-century Romano-Jewish historian who was born in Jerusalem

Anna Komnene

A Byzantine princess and author of the Alexiad, an account of the reign of her father, the Byzantine emperor, Alexios I

Natalie Zemon Davis

A Canadian and American historian of the early modern period.

Bill James

An American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential.

Plutarch

Greek philosopher and historian c. AD 46 – after AD 119

Elie Wiesel

Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and prolific author advocating for human rights.